Herbert Art Talks Episode 4: Bridging the Gap - Gordon Cheung’s Megalopolis

How do landscape paintings reinforce or challenge traditional power structures? 

Drawing on both Eastern and Western art traditions, British-Chinese artist Gordon Cheung encourages us to question the assumptions of familiar landscape paintings, which often reflect the politics of a world where history is written by the victors. 

Now on display in Divided Selves, his painting Megalopolis is inspired by a major Chinese development project, combining three neighbouring cities into a single urban powerhouse. The work is a futuristic, mixed media cityscape, mixing features of traditional landscape painting with surreal, dreamlike elements, in a style he describes as the “technological sublime”. 

Inspired by his own “in-between” identity, Cheung raises the question of whether diaspora communities can act as a “conduit of understanding” between cultures, helping to rebuild bridges that have previously been burned. 

Divided Selves: Memories, Legacies, Belonging is free to visit at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum until 24 September 2023. Find out more at theherbert.org.